Moral faculty

“ This is still more impressive when we consider that we have a moral faculty; for it is the very object and business of this faculty to deal with right and wrong, good and evil; the facts and magnitudes of which are obvious in the course of nature. ”

“ Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. ”

“ He only becomes sublime to us in a moral point of view, when he acts, moreover, as a person, in a manner conformable with this destination; if our respect bears not only on his moral faculty, but on the use he makes of this faculty; if dignity, in his case, is due, not only to his moral aptitude; but to the real morality of his conduct. It is quite a different thing to direct our judgment and attention to the moral faculty generally, and to the possibility of a will absolutely free, and to be directing it to the use of this faculty, and to the reality of this absolute freedom of willing. ”

“ It is the want of a clear distinction between the logical process which determines the character of an act,—the moral judgment,—and the emotion which immediately supervenes when the character of the act is determined,—the moral feeling,—that accounts for the exaggerated epithets which are often attributed to the operations of the moral faculty, and for the haste and negligence in which men are consequently encouraged to indulge, when arriving at their moral decisions. ”

“ It is enough to say that he admits two rational principles, 'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned only by experience. The moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. ”

“ Apart from the question of the ultimate sanction of moral conduct, there have always been two explanations of the mental act variously known as "ethical judgment," "moral faculty," "moral sense" or conscience. On the one side there have been those who considered that moral judgment was an emotion, an intuition, or instinctive recognition of right or wrong, which implied no rational or intellectual process beyond [Pg 10] that which is involved in registering or perceiving the fact. ”

“ Perceiving in ourselves a will, and a crowd of intellectual and emotional phenomena that seem wholly different from the properties of matter, we infer the existence of an immaterial substance which wills, thinks, and feels, and can classify its own operations with considerable precision. The term faculty is simply an expression of classification. If we say that the moral faculty differs from the æsthetic faculty, we can only mean that the mind forms certain judgments of moral excellence, and also certain judgments of beauty, and that these two mental processes are clearly distinct. ”

“ It is by this faculty, natural to man, that he is a moral agent, that he is a law to himself, but this faculty, I say, not to be considered merely as a principle in his heart, which is to have some influence as well as others, but considered as a faculty in kind and in nature supreme over all others, and which bears its own authority of being so. ”

“ Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them. ”

“ The Will not a Moral Faculty.—​Again, though it is impossible to attain moral excellence of character without the agency of a vigorous will, the will itself is not a moral faculty, and a man may attain great strength of will in consequence of continued efforts in the repression or direction of his appetites or desires, and yet be an unworthy man ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ But when we approach the subject with an express view to moral culture, we must cross the field of emotional association in general by a new track.
The newly-appointed professors of the theory of education are perhaps not yet fully aware that, when they venture upon the troubled arena of moral education, they will not be able to evade the long-standing question. What is the moral faculty? ”

“ But we have now to take a further step, which will bring us close to our special subject for to-day, viz., the efficient motives of good conduct. The non-moral faculties are not only not anti-moral, as has been shown, but, when appealed to in the right way, they lend to Morality a friendly, an almost indispensable support. The æsthetic, the intellectual, and the emotional faculty have not in themselves a moral quality, but when used as auxiliaries they pave the way for moral considerations pure and simple, and have in this sense an immense propædeutic value. ”

“ It appears that the morality of man—his great glory—that his sense of responsibility and of voluntary moral power, that which most peculiarly constitutes him man, involves the law of moral influence as between man and man. It appears further that the power and faculty of moral influence for good must needs involve the law of moral influence for evil. ”

“ When it becomes clear that the moral faculty, in the presence of the59 existing conditions and relations of life, perceives what ought to be done, and what men are obligated to do, and what they cannot disregard without demerit, ill-desert or guilt, then the right of conscience to direct conduct is justified. ”

“ The terms stand for a step of discernment and judgment beyond these, and denote the ethical reality of good-desert or ill-desert for the moral agent who conforms to rightness, or offends against its claims. He who conforms deserves well; he that offends deserves ill. They, therefore, mark distinctly and definitely the point in the psychology of the conscience where the faculty discerns that those who do right ought to receive favor and those who do wrong ought to experience disfavor. ”

“ We have seen that the distinctive characteristic of the inductive school of moralists is an absolute denial of the existence of any natural or innate moral sense or faculty enabling us to distinguish between the higher and lower parts of our nature, revealing to us either the existence of a law of duty or the conduct that it prescribes. ”

“ If, indeed, the conscience reported entirely different codes throughout, from bottom to top and from center to circumference, or codes with contradictions as to the cardinal virtues and vices, then we might well50 question the existence and action of a real, original and normal faculty as actually perceiving a real moral distinction and principle of duty. ”

“ We are aware of the attempts which have been made to invest our emotions with the stamp and attribute of morality: but, in addition to the testimony of our own experience, we have the highest authority for holding that none of the natural feelings or modifications of the human heart partake in any degree of a moral character. ”

“ If we look into the works on ethics, from Aristotle down to our own day—take up, for instance, the work of Herbert Spencer on the Data of Ethics, or that of Leslie Stephen on the Science of Ethics—I think you will find that in no two works is there any precise agreement as to what are the primary grounds of moral obligation. ”

“ They concerned the powers and possibilities of man in the crowning endowments of his nature, and in the highest ascent of their evident intention and adaptation. They touched the great problems of personal and social welfare in the most vital relations and decisive interests. So the old sages became moralists and their great themes were the themes of virtue and duty. Not very deeply, however, did they, for centuries, succeed in penetrating the rational principles of the moral life and the authority of the moral judgments. ”

“ And it may be admitted that, in some cases at least, it is right and proper that a man’s motives should thus influence our judgment. But the question is: What sort of moral judgment is it right and proper that they should influence? ”

“ This superior something further, which is a possible law or ought to the individual man, does not depend for its existence on his choice or opinion. Either there is no morality, so says the moral consciousness, or moral duties exist independently of their position by this or that person: my duty may be mine and no other man’s, but I do not make it mine. If it is duty, it would be the duty of any person in my case and condition, whether they thought so or not: in a word, duty is ‘objective,’ in the sense of not being contingent on the opinion or choice of this or that subject. ”

“ Then, if mankind may err, if the right of private judgment is not to be suppressed, if the supposed general experience is not infallible, how can it be moral for me always to follow it even in the teeth of my own judgment? ”

“ But if morality has its foundations in the constitution of human nature, which itself proceeds from the Divine Source of all things, I conceive that its credentials are sufficiently assured. In the present chapter, I have, in attempting to illustrate the possibility of future improvements in the art and theory of conduct, been necessarily led to note some deficiencies in the existing moral sentiment. ”

“ They both agree that the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the application of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws ”

“ I propose therefore to begin our inquiry into the detail of goodness—into the particular kinds of conduct which the man wishing to do good for the sake of its goodness is entitled to count good—by considering what is of permanent moral value in the institutions of civil life, as established in Europe; in what way they have contributed and contribute to the possibility of morality in the higher sense of the term, and are justified, or have a moral claim upon our loyal conformity, in consequence. ”

“ The dispute of the moralists has reference, not to any characteristic of the qualities in conduct which we cognize as moral, but to the mode in which they are cognized. Our conception of such qualities involves the conception of absoluteness in them, and it is only by that notion of absoluteness that they are distinguished from the other qualities which appear in human conduct, such as wisdom, prudence, ingenuity, and the like. ”

“ Along with duty, obligation, merit, innocence, or guilt, it may be affirmed of the moral agent. We may say, "he is right," in doing so or so. We may speak of the inner sentiment as right or wrong. So we may of the external action. For the true and full extent of moral quality, we must make it cover the agent himself, and both the inner and outer sides of his personal conduct. Conduct has an internal and an external part. The motive is only one part. An action is relatively right, with respect to the agent, when he has the right will in right motive ”

“ It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. ”

“ Of what may we justly affirm moral quality? Where does the conscience apply the distinctions of right and wrong? What are properly the objects, and the only objects, of moral approval or condemnation? Or, to put it in a way possibly more easily understood, to what human activities or features of life does moral quality belong?
It has already been noted in general that only personal beings can be moral agents or become, in what they are and do, objects of moral judgment. Apart from personality, no place for virtue or vice can be found. ”

“ For though, while in obeying our fallible conscience, we have thus failed to bring our whole outward action in the case into harmony with full duty, or have even done what to others about us or to God above us was wrong, we have maintained our own subjective personal moral integrity, in maintaining that which is the fundamental and essential element of all morality, the right intention and effort. ”

“ This fact leads us quickly to the recognition of a second one, which becomes just as plain on examination—namely, that the particulars of conduct in which the moral advancement of mankind appears most questionable are exactly and entirely those which we have seen to be incident to the indirect relations of human fellowship ”

“ Again, in 'oblige' and 'obligation,' as when we speak of 'being obliged,' or of having 'received an obligation,' a moral truth is asserted—this namely, that having received a benefit or a favour at the hands of another, we are thereby morally bound to show ourselves grateful for the same. We cannot be ungrateful without denying not merely a moral truth, but one incorporated in the very language which we employ. ”

“ They would appear as various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts not capriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of its nature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws,—a necessity or law which of course knows no exception and is as ‘ruthless’ as fate. ”